The present disclosure relates to patient support apparatuses such as hospital beds. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to patient support apparatuses having graphical user interfaces for viewing data and entering commands.
Hospital beds having graphical user interfaces (GUI's), which are sometimes referred to as graphical caregiver interfaces (GCI's) by those skilled in the art, are known. The GUI's of some hospital beds are able to receive user inputs for controlling bed functions and are able to display a wide variety of data or information to caregivers. Some of the types of bed information displayed on such GUI's may include, for example, bed height data, bed position data (e.g., horizontal, recumbent, fowler, cardiac, leg raised, vascular, Trendelenburg, reverse Trendelenburg, and chair), head angle, brake status data, side rail status data, surface state (e.g., normal, max-inflate, sleep mode, seat deflate, alternating pressure, wave mode such as Hill-Rom's OPTIREST™ feature, left/right turn assist, and continuous lateral rotation therapy). Some of the bed functions controllable with GUI's of hospital beds may include, for example, articulation of head, thigh, and foot sections, bed height adjustments, brake set/release, and surface control functions for those hospital beds having an integrated bed frame and mattress system.
GUI's of some hospital beds are also usable to control a weigh scale system and patient position monitoring (PPM) functions of beds. The GUI's of such beds typically display patient weight. Other patient information that may be displayed on a GUI of a hospital bed includes patient height, vital signs information (e.g., temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, respiration rate, and saturation of peripheral oxygen (SpO2)), inputs (e.g., fluids and solids) and outputs (e.g., fluids and solids). Various alarms are also displayed on GUI's of some prior art hospital beds. These alarms may include head angle alarms, PPM alarms, siderail position alarms, and so on.
Hospital bed manufacturers are known to offer GUI's as an option that can be purchased by healthcare facilities at an increased cost. Thus, beds that lack GUI's are usually less expensive than beds that have GUI's, assuming all other features of the beds with and without GUI's are equal. Of course, the beds without GUI's typically have manual-type user inputs such as buttons, knobs, levers, and the like for controlling various bed functions. Beds with GUI's oftentimes also include these manual-type user inputs, as well, for control redundancy. Accordingly, it will be appreciated that reducing the number of beds having GUI's represents a cost savings to healthcare facilities.